Page:Kinship and social organisation.djvu/60

48 husband are called atta in Telegu and atte in Canarese, Tamil here spoiling the harmony by having one term, attai, for the father's sister and another, mami, for the mother's brother's wife and the mother-in-law. Since, however, the Tamil term for the father's sister is only another form of the Telegu and Canarese words for the combined relationships, the exception only serves to strengthen the agreement with the condition which would follow from the cross-cousin marriage.

The South Indian terms for cross-cousin and brother- and sister-in-law are complicated by the presence of distinctions dependent on the sex and relative age of those who use them, but these complications do not disguise how definitely the terminology would follow from the cross-cousin marriage. Thus, to take only two examples: a Tamil man applies the term maittuni to the daughters of his mother's brother and of his father's sister as well as to his brother's wife and his wife's sister, and a Canarese woman uses one term for the sons of her mother's brother and of her father's sister, for her husband's brother and her sister's husband.

So far as we know, the cross-cousin marriage is not now practised by the vast majority of those who use these terms of relationship. If the terminology has been the result of the cross-cousin marriage, it is only a survival of an ancient social condition in which this form of marriage was habitual. That it is such a survival, however,